Sunday, December 2, 2012

Major unions, environmental advocates and other
progressive groups are reconvening an advocacy coalition to build public
support for reforming the Senate filibuster rules and pressure members
to follow suit at the beginning of the 113th Congress, TPM has learned.
“Facing unparalleled challenges—a languid economic recovery, crushing
debt, and threats at home and abroad—the country cannot afford another
two years of inaction fostered by outmoded and broken legislative
institutions,” reads a statement from the newly reconvened Fix the
Senate Now coalition, provided to TPM. “In recent decades, Senate
conventions have devolved to remove incentives for bipartisan comity,
collegiality, and compromise. Whereas Senators once resorted to
filibustering only in rare and exceptional instances of intense
opposition, rampant obstruction has now transformed standard operating
procedure.”
The Fix the Senate coalition includes the Alliance for Justice,
the Brennan Center for Justice, Common Cause, the Communications Workers
of America, the Sierra Club, and the United Auto Workers.
Their renewed efforts come as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid
(D-NV) and a newly re-elected Senate Democratic majority have announced
their intention to change Senate rules to make the GOP’s obstruction
efforts more transparent, and speed up the pace of legislative business
in the upper chamber.
The same coalition advocated similar reforms in 2010 and 2011 when a
group of new Democratic senators led an earlier effort to change the
Senate’s filibuster rules. But that push came just as Democrats had been
dealt a crushing defeat in midterm elections and lacked the support of
Democratic leaders, who have since changed heart about the need to
adjust the rules.
The prospects of successfully weakening the minority’s power in the Senate is much brighter now.
“Today, majority rule in the Senate is the exception, not the rule,”
the statement says. “We believe that common sense reforms will end
routine and reflexive obstruction and will ensure that the Senate will
once again be able to address the critical issues facing our country.”